Day by day if you make small positive changes, you will notice that success and happiness come from your daily routine. Follow me on my journey of creating a happy and fulfilling life; through fitness, health, diy's, appearance, positive thinking and much more.

New Year Same Me, Just Better!

Well it’s January… The perfect time for fresh starts, new beginnings, goal planning and saying goodbye to our sorrows from the previous year. I’m going to take this opportunity to share with you some New Years resolutions and break them down on how you can make them a success, to create a 2018 to remember.

Lets start with everyone’s favourite:

Time To Make Your Health And Fitness A Priority

I know that this one can be a challenging one and trust me we all struggle with it… If you break it down into smaller pieces or victories you will end up seeing a big improvement in the end.

Get a doctor and do your regular check up. You may be low in something as simple as iron, b12 or thyroid hormones and getting those treated can make a world of difference with how you feel! Also do your own research on what the “optimal levels of b12 and iron should be”. Canada has some pretty outdated testing so their standard is actually lower than the optimal levels, which means they may tell you that your levels are fine when actually they should be higher to make you feel human again.

Get yourself a health and fitness planner. I will post a picture of the one that I purchased below so you can get an idea. It helps you track how many glasses of water you have had during the day, meal planning, setting monthly goals etc etc. And it even has STICKERS, which even as adults we still get excited over. (Don’t pretend you don’t). You can find them at http://www.michaels.com/ . I find that when you set some hard goals on paper and also keep track on how you are doing, you are more enticed and more likely to excel at what you are doing.

Drink your 8 glasses of water a day. I find it quite amusing that people can polish off 8 cans of beer or 8 glasses of wine no problem but when it comes to water it’s like forcing someone to jump off of a bridge. Our bodies are made up of approximately 60% of water, we need it to thrive, to make our organs work optimally and to help get rid of the yucky stuff that we put into our bodies!!! Ewww.

Bring a water bottle with you wherever you go! If you have it on hand you are more likely to drink it!!!! (Isn’t that a funny concept?)

As soon as you wake up chug a glass of water… even better make it a warm cup of water with a lemon in it! It does wonders for your digestion, skin, weight management and all of that good stuff.

Flavour your water with fruit or cucumbers or mint! It is fun to create your own concoction. If that is intimidating Pinterest or google helps with these recipes.

Trade in those sugary/sweet drinks for water. Those drinks have way too much sugar in them or aspartame, which is basically drinking poison. Try it out your hips and health will love you for it.

Cut Down on Sugar. I was soon to realize how detrimental sugar is to your health and wellbeing when I fell ill and started to do my own research. It literally feeds Cancer, is the Main culprit in those extra inches on your waist line, rots out your teeth and causes energy crashes throughout the day. Why do we eat this stuff!??? I honestly lived off of sour soothers and war heads. People don’t realize that sugar is as addictive as the powerful drug cocaine. You actually get withdrawals from coming off of sugar, so you want more and more, making it a viscous cycle. Once you make it a habit of ridding it out of your life or at least cutting down on it, you will notice that you don’t crave it anymore to the point that if you were to try it again it may turn you off of it all together.

Trade candy for fruit. Fruit can be absolutely delicious and refreshing if you give it a chance. Cut some up and make a platter to bring with you to work to snack on during the day. Use some Greek yoghurt as a fruit dip and bam! Heaven in your mouth.

Keep it around your house. Make it more accessible and you are more likely to grab it!

Make fruit smoothies! Fruit smoothies are honestly such a treat. Frozen bananas add that extra sweetness, throw in some berries and almond milk with a scoop of vanilla protein powder and you have yourself a delicious treat as well as a source of healthy vitamins.

Start taking vitamin D. Did you know that most of the population is deficient in vitamin D? Even people that live close to the equator! Vitamin D is our sunshine vitamin.. we get it from “Mr Sun”. The problem is we do not get enough of it, especially where I live… good old “Winterpeg”. Lacking vitamin D can cause a whole host of issues such as: depression, anxiety, low immunity, infertility etc etc. Have you heard of the “winter blues”? This is caused by low vitamin D levels.

Purchase a liquid form of vitamin D3 (make sure it’s D3 and not D2). Usually one drop is equal to 1000 iu. You are pretty safe with taking three drops a day. Do not exceed this unless advised by your dr, as you can overdose in vitamin D.

Get outside for at least 20 minutes a day even in the Winter. Besides fresh air feels good and any sunshine you can get take it!

Get Moving. Yes this involves getting off of the couch…. or does it? I will talk about that in a second. Sometimes our biggest excuse is that we don’t have time to get our behinds to the gym. That can be a reasonable excuse, juggling kids, work, meals etc. But that does not make an excuse to stop moving or getting the exercise that you need. Exercising isn’t only about looking good, (although a six pack sounds pretty enticing). It is the best thing for your health, lowers blood pressure, increases serotonin (that feel good hormone that you get from eating chocolate)… whoops I mentioned the “c” word. It also gives you more energy and can help you in all other aspects of life.

You can do workouts while sitting on the couch. With bands or weights, doing stretches during commercials etc.

You don’t need to go to the gym to get fit/healthy…. workouts from home can be just as beneficial. Take the dog for an extra walk, purchase a trampoline, go swimming. The list is really endless.

3. Try a new fun form of exercise every week! Yesterday me and my friend amanda went to https://flyingsquirrelsports.ca/ . It’s a trampoline park along with wall climbing, slack lines to walk across, big air bags to jump into and much more. We jumped for an hour and had the best workout ever, which didn’t even seem like a workout!

4. Get a workout buddy or an “adventure friend”. Let’s face it it’s more fun experiencing new challenges with a friend or companion. It will motivate you to push harder when someone else is watching. And you can celebrate your achievements together!!!

5. Recognize your achievements and reward yourself for them. (And not with crappy food) It can be anything from a new workout outfit every month that you meet your goals to a nice hot bubble bath after a workout. Get creative and have fun with it! Exercise shouldn’t be a chore…. it should be fun! Which will make you want to get up and do more of it!

Well it looks like I only covered one of the important New Years Resolutions, so it looks like I will have to talk about the others in my next posts… Besides get started with this health and fitness portion. If you have any questions or comments my contact information is on my contact page. Now get those buns moving and most importantly have some fun🤗